Jumping never felt so deliberate
March 17, 2013 10:57 AM   Subscribe

Take the twitch out of platforming with Bump, a delightful new little turn-based randomly-generated roguelikelike by clever game dev and creative fellow Aaron Steed. Jump at or on or over things! Collect diamonds with head-bumping! Avoid and/or destroy spikes and bad guys! Try not to die! Die anyway! It's a good time.

To crib some helpful clarifying notes on gameplay from RPS's Live Free, Play Hard mention of the game today:
The maps are randomly generated and often seem impossible. They are less daunting if you know certain facts:

You can move sideways into stationary spikes, just not on top of them.

When you bounce into blocks, you affect everything in that column. Gems turn to points and spikes drill downward (potentially destroying other spikes or clearing paths).
To which I will add: you can while in mid air move sideways safely into spikes your are level with, just as you can walk into them sideways on solid ground.

Bump is an entry in the nearly-over-as-I-type-this 7 Day Roguelike challenge, which is a game jam with a very self-explanatory name; it has a website, 7drl.org, which is slow as heck right now but is worth spending some time at in the near future when it is not falling over.

Far less satisfying as a game but sort of brilliant to look at and to trace what does work in Bump back to the point of inspiration is Steed's initial failed experiment, Super Mario RL.

You may also remember Steed's somewhat less-hurriedly constructed real-time-with-pausing-if-you-prefer roguelike platformer, Red Rogue.
posted by cortex (12 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
The mechanics fit together amazingly well. I've only played a little bit, but it seems like a surprisingly elegant puzzle game.

I'm really curious as to how the world generation works to make sure it's always possible to advance (assuming that is true).
posted by lucidium at 11:37 AM on March 17, 2013


Well, 23670 is my best so far. One thing that comes in handy: you can jump through falling spikes if you press up when they're in the square directly above you. That doesn't work with the moving cross things though.
posted by lucidium at 1:24 PM on March 17, 2013


It's like a procedural DROD platormer. I'd love to know more about how the levels are generated.
posted by postcommunism at 1:35 PM on March 17, 2013


you can jump through falling spikes if you press up when they're in the square directly above you

!!! That is some handy shit. I wonder if it's intended or just a bug, though, since it does seem a bit unlikely and clashes with the spikey monsters, yeah.

I had already gotten some decent mileage as of a couple games ago from waiting for a falling spike to take out the block over my head to permit a diagonal jump that otherwise would be impossible, which has been handy for a couple of tricky saves.

Current best for me is 21940; I tend to manage to get myself killed before time runs out, which suggests my play needs some more care and attention in the late game.
posted by cortex at 1:42 PM on March 17, 2013


Another falling spike discovery, which reaaaaally feels like a bug: if you move to the side onto a tile where a falling spike currently is, and below which there is a block, the spike doesn't hurt you and does fall through to that block, destroying it as expected, but you are left in a standing-on-a-block state where you can then initiate a jump.
posted by cortex at 1:48 PM on March 17, 2013


I'm really looking forward to the day when you make your own roguelike. I'm thinking a brutally difficult, irreverent ST:TNG-based one called Redshirt: Mission to Grarpoint Station or something.
posted by lazaruslong at 1:50 PM on March 17, 2013


Welcome to today! Get to work immediately.
posted by forgetful snow at 4:04 PM on March 17, 2013


I am having so many ideas about a Star Trek RLL now. Nothing well-formed, but ideas for sure. Hmmmmm.

In any case, 31160! Hell yeah.
posted by cortex at 6:25 PM on March 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


The level generation is really great in this game; it really feels like they were all made by a creative mind with an expectation for how each area should be traveled. Almost makes me wonder if the algorithm starts with an optimal track and builds a level around it; I have found very few spots where I couldn't proceed. Surprisingly addictive.
posted by lostburner at 1:30 AM on March 18, 2013


It took more goes than I'd care to admit, but I finally managed to break 30k with 31520. I think I might have actually got most of those points from dropping the moving spikes too, they're more valuable than I realised at first.
posted by lucidium at 4:20 PM on March 18, 2013


I love the game mechanics! I'd like to see a longer, more varied and polished game with the same concept. So far my high score is 37120.
posted by martinrebas at 2:19 PM on March 21, 2013


This is really cool. Not the game play depth of say nethack but amazing for such a simple mechanic.
posted by Mitheral at 10:57 PM on March 23, 2013


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